Meetings

Hannah Howell, New York Times and USA Today Bestseller, has been published for twenty-six years. She now has two Historical Romance series published by Kensington books. The 20th book in the Murray series set in medieval Scotland came out in December of last year. The other series is the Wherlockes, set in eighteenth century England. If He’s Noble, the sixth book in the Wherlocke series will be out in September

In this workshop, Hannah will speak on the importance of the words you use in your writing. How the change of one simple verb can take your sentence from adequate to powerful. Or how you can give the reader a good picture of a character with just a few well-chosen words instead of pages of description. Even how the use of such things as simile and metaphor can add texture and depth. A story has a plot and characters you hope will catch a reader’s attention but it is the words you use that will hold it fast. There will be handouts and book recommendations.

Has your word count wilted in the summer heat? If so, come get Prompted to Write at our August meeting! Based on a chosen prompt by the Amherst Writing Method, we will have a 30-minute writing session followed by a discussion of our creations. Join us and get back in the groove after those lazy days of summer.

Here’s what you need to produce a successful television story: Develop memorable characters. Build suspense. Show conflict. Tell a compelling story. Find justice. Here’s what you need to become a successful television journalist: Never miss your deadlines. Create a brilliant and flawless product every time. Be completely devoted to your job. Here’s thescoop: What you need to write a successful novel–in any genre!– are exactly the same things! Hank Phillippi Ryan’s won 30 Emmy awards for her investigative reporting…and the prestigious Mary Higgins Clark, Agatha and Anthony awards for her crime fiction. How? She’ll will divulge the tricks of theTV news trade—and give you a top ten list to help you make your book the best it can be.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN is the on-air investigative reporter for Boston’s NBC affiliate. She’s won 32 EMMYs, 12 Edward R. Murrow awards and dozens of other honors for her ground-breaking journalism. A bestselling author of six mystery novels, Ryan has won multiple prestigious awards for her crime fiction: the Agatha, Anthony, Macavity, and for THE OTHER WOMAN, the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. National reviews have called her a “master at crafting suspenseful mysteries” and “a superb and gifted storyteller.” Her newest thriller, THE WRONG GIRL, has the extraordinary honor of winning the 2013 Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel! A six-week Boston Globe bestseller, it is also an Anthony and Daphne Award nominee, a Patriot Ledger bestseller, and was dubbed “Another winner” in a Booklist starred review and “Stellar” by Library Journal. She’s a founding teacher at Mystery Writers of America University and 2013 president of national Sisters in Crime. Watch for her next novel, TRUTH BE TOLD, on October 7, 2014. Visit her online at HankPhillippiRyan.com, on Twitter @hank_phillippi and Facebook at HankPhillippiRyanAuthorPage.

Whether you’re just getting started or a seasoned pro, writing a query letter is enough to strike fear in the most resilient writer. During this workshop, we’ll talk about the basics of the query letter, what to include and what to leave out, what to do when you’re not getting requests, how to query again AFTER you’ve had an agent, how to do agent research, and when to shelve it and move on to your next work.

Kristine Carlson Asselin started querying in 2010. After more than 150 query letters and three agents, she’s now happily signed with Kathleen Rushall of Marsal Lyon Agency. She has recently signed with Bloomsbury Spark for her debut young adult novel, ANY WAY YOU SLICE IT. Let her experience with querying help you get off on the right foot.

New York Times bestselling author and twenty-year romance veteran Suzanne Brockmann and her husband, Edgar Award finalist and award-winning screenwriterEd Gaffney discuss the art of control-freak-friendly collaboration as they share the lessons they learned about writing genre fiction from co-writing and co-producing a romantic comedy movie.

After childhood plans to become the captain of a starship didn’t pan out, Suzanne Brockmanntook her fascination with military history, her respect for the men and women who serve, her reverence for diversity, and her love of storytelling, and explored brave new worlds as a New York Times bestselling romance author. Over the past twenty years, she has written more than fifty novels, including her award-winning Troubleshooters series about Navy SEAL heroes and the women—and sometimes men—who win their hearts. Her latest romantic suspense, DO OR DIE, is available on February 4, 2014, in hardcover and ebook from Ballantine Books, and in audio from Blackstone Audio. In addition to writing books, Suz Brockmann has co-produced a feature-length movie, the award-winning romantic comedy The Perfect Wedding, which she co-wrote with her husband, Ed Gaffney, and their son, Jason. She has also co-written a YA novel, NIGHT SKY, set in the world of her paranormal Fighting Destiny series, with her daughter Melanie, due out in October 2014 from Sourcebooks Fire. Find Suz on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/SuzanneBrockmannBooks, follow her on Twitter @SuzBrockmann, and visit her website at www.SuzanneBrockmann.com to find out more about upcoming releases and appearances.

Ed Gaffney is the critically-acclaimed author of four legal thrillers published by Bantam/Dell, the latest of which, Enemy Combatant, was a finalist for the EDGAR Award. He also co-wrote and produced a full-length play named Looking for Billy Haines, which ran off-Broadway for approximately 10 weeks during the spring of 2010. And most recently, Ed became an award-winning filmmaker, when The Perfect Wedding, a feature film he co-wrote and co-produced won the Bud Abbott Award for Best Feature Length Comedy at the Garden State Film Festival. He lives in Florida and Massachusetts with his wife, New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann. Find out more about The Perfect Wedding at www.ThePerfectWeddingMovie.com

You’ve put your heart and sweat into your writing. Then you bravely submit your manuscript to the scrutiny of your copy editor. When returned to you, it’s full of red pencil, comments, corrections, etc. Do the edits make you want to cry?

This Workshop will help calm the sting of a copy editor’s marks. We’ll hear from a professional copy editor, who will help us understand how she acts as an author’s partner. We’ll demystify the work behind:
— Keeping readers engaged.
— Maintaining the author’s voice.
— Making your artistry shine.
— Enhancing your credibility.

Join us to see the glass half full…so that next time you see edits, you can react not with anger but with relief that your copy editor is truly on your team.

With a lifelong love of books, Penny Andler found her calling at Hofstra University, where she received a bachelor’s in English Publishing and Literature Studies. Excited to have been in New York at the center of book publishing, she served as a copy editor at Warren Gorham & Lamont (now RIA), Scholastic, and Random House. Upon returning to New England and moving to the Boston area, Penny expanded her editing experience with finance articles for Standard & Poor’s, industry pieces at IT magazine CIO, and children’s books for Candlewick Press. As a freelancer, she returned to her trade book roots. Now authors and publishers can turn to Penny’s professional eye and knowledgeable hand to make their texts shine.

Lori Perkins has edited twenty erotica anthologies and more than 100 erotic novels, as well as published erotica under a pseudonym. She has taught writing and editing as an adjunct professor at NYU’s Center for Publishing for two decades.

Over the past twenty years or so psychological research has ascertained that motivation and behavior change in a particular and consistent pattern, and they have named the steps involved ‘The Stages of Change’. As novelists we can use elements of the Stages of Change to assist us with character development and to help us understand how to maximize productivity in our writing lives.

Jane Lesley, MSW, is a retired clinical social worker and lecturer at Boston University. Over her twenty years of practice she used Motivational Enhancement (the Stages of Change) in her clinical practice and with her students; she is now using it in her writing.